ANALYSIS: Tragedy forces Rio to tackle old slum drama

By Diana Renee Apr 9, 2010, 11:21 GMT

Rio de Janeiro - The rain at least 166 dead and hundreds missing this week in and around Rio de Janeiro forced the Brazilian metropolis to face an old problem: the proliferation of hillside slums.

As the latest tragedy proved again showed, poor drainage systems, accumulation of rubbish and terrain with propensity for mudslides are a deadly combination.

The recurring disasters that too often accompany heavy rain are a major problem for Rio, the host city for the 2016 Olympics, the first Games ever held in South America.

Rio's slums, the infamous favelas, began to appear in the late 19th century. Historians trace the trend to the awarding of hillside plots to war veterans.

The favelas are now part of the landscape of Rio de Janeiro almost as much as the statue of Christ the Redeemer and Sugarloaf Mountain: there are around 1,000 such settlements in the city squeezed between the sea and the mountains.

Over the years, the favelas grew, and they are currently estimated to house 1.4 million people. Forsaken by the state, they have become havens for drug gangs and targets for periodic police raids, in which have thousands of innocent people have been slain in the crossfire.

Attempts to solve Rio's slum problem have been haphazard and ineffective for more than half a century.

In the 1960s, Governor Carlos Lacerda suggested bulldozing slums to relocate residents to homes built on the outskirts of the city. The plan was abandoned, however, in the face of evidence that the new settlements were too far from jobs, hospitals and schools without providing alternatives for the livelihoods of lum dwellers.

Starting the 1980s, officials tried to improve the hillside communities, bringing them up to city standards. During 15 years, the 'Favela-Bairro' project, implemented in 143 slums, was singled out by the United Nations as a model.

Morro dos Prazeres, in the Rio neighbourhood of Santa Teresa, was one of the favelas that benefited from the programme. But rescue teams this week recovered more than 20 bodies that had been buried by a mudslide there.

Experts told the Brazilian daily Folha de Sao Paulo that authorities failed in the effort to maintain improvements that had cost more than 500,000 dollars.

   Urban planner Sergio Magalhaes said there was a lack of maintenance in storm water drainage systems, and without a system for regular trash collection, rubbish piles up and makes the area more vulnerable to mudslides.

In communities that did not receive the upgrades under the Favela- Bairro initiative, the rain were especially deadly.

For example, Bumba hill in the town of Niteroi, some 13 kilometres from Rio, was built on a massive rubbish dump. Scores of buildings including a childcare centre, a bar and a pizzeria were buried Wednesday in a mudslide that civil defence officials estimate claimed around 200 lives.

Experts complain that the tragedy should have been foreseen.

'A rubbish dump is very unstable terrain,' Engineering Club President Francis Bogossian pointed out Thursday.

The latest disaster seems to have revived a 50-year-old idea: Rio Mayor Eduardo Paes and Governor Sergio Cabral spoke in favour of putting a brake on favela expansion and relocating residents of vulnerable areas.

That would require major investments to build both new housing and the infrastructure to provide both safe homes and access to jobs.